Okay
Microsoft announces Mesh - a peer to peer data and media sharing network pitched to households - though Gates vision ... (Oddly IBMish) Mozilla announces mobile meets web platform a new type of fox. Everyone announces ubiquitous APIs. Yahoo announces social elements on all services - and open strategy - opening all google services to developers. A sandbox with rules. The unification of all social user profiles (Finally). Standardizing API behavior. Yahoo is great, but it's the execution of last year's vision. Depending on developers to build the world. Oh, wait, now he's announcing the social embedding. Rewiring Yahoo? That is news.
4.24.2008
4.21.2008
Back from holiday
I took about six months off from the whirlygig of comments and absorbtion and such, and a strongly recommend it to anyone feeling, well, whirly. I'm going to Web 2.0 Expo later this week and I anticipate that I will have some new posts as a result.
11.24.2007
The mistake
I'm showing my Touch to one of my brothers in law and he plays around with it and then tells all about the Nokia similcrum that's waiting for him in a package at home. Yeah,it's bigger but it has all these other things you can add on. He seems to lose interest in my toy when I tell h that that's all there is, no addons in view. He isn't the same kind of user as me. He's buying devices. He has seven mp3 players that he sorts different types of content among. He's generous in accommodating design flaws. I'm not. My 16 year old played with the touch for a few minutes in a Starbucks and she understood the package immediately-- and somewhat offensively said that I wasnt really the target market (she was, she sez). Like iPod and iTunes from the start, the product is a designed experience. So, she sez, with that trademarked heavy-lidded incredulity, "They just made guesses?? They just guessed what people would want to do with it??! That is so random!"
But that is exactly it. Its a nice package of supremely confident guesses. And for me anyway so far all the guesses are correct.
So what's the mistake? It's in evaluating the objects in terms of technology rather than the integrated package of process and tool and use.
But that is exactly it. Its a nice package of supremely confident guesses. And for me anyway so far all the guesses are correct.
So what's the mistake? It's in evaluating the objects in terms of technology rather than the integrated package of process and tool and use.
11.01.2007
Community Landscape
There's a confusion rolling around right now about the difference between a community (as a group distinguished by a shared interest) and the software that supports the current style of online community tools. Communities have made use of a wide variety of communications channels since the year dot. We're just adding to the channel options right now. And like the telephone, some of these tools and tricks are profoundly changing the behavior of communities. But I don't think they're changing what a community is.
I've been involved in online communities for more than 15 years now, since when your email address was a string of numbers (remember CompuServe?).
Anyone involved in a discipline requiring audience analysis and the analysis of communication channels develops a keen understanding of the attributes of a community.
Here are some examples of different styles of online communities for later discussion:
It's a mixed bag, but each has its distinct online channels.
Next: More on each and the difference and similarities.
I've been involved in online communities for more than 15 years now, since when your email address was a string of numbers (remember CompuServe?).
Anyone involved in a discipline requiring audience analysis and the analysis of communication channels develops a keen understanding of the attributes of a community.
Here are some examples of different styles of online communities for later discussion:
- A forum for experts on hot button topics
- A reference resource for specific types of business advice
- A user group
- A group of employees of a single company
- A working group
- A national sales organization, out in the field
- A team of catastrophe adjusters in the field
- The admins in a large company
- Wine collectors
- Yacht owners
- Bentley owners
- The members of a family trust
- Usability experts
It's a mixed bag, but each has its distinct online channels.
Next: More on each and the difference and similarities.
9.29.2007
Twitter meets Corporate America
I'm posting this to find people working on cracking the same nut -- I need to share ideas and I need to share my pain.
I work for the Man.
I'm selling Twitter internally as a solution to some enterprise channel needs and it's a slog. First, it's free -- very hard to sell. Second, it's outside -- what if it stops? Third, it's hard to understand -- what are you talking about? or worse, they listen hard and still don't get it but think they do and start talking about it in a way that just won't be successful. But god bless em, they're trying.
Underlying these small barriers is the big, intransigent one: the people I need to persuade don't understand the concept of Channels.
Oh, BTW, here's a magnificent discussion of Twitter on the threshold -- if you're interested in Twitter, you should not miss this. I am a big Blue Whale Labs fan. But, hey, Stowe and Greg, your wonderful PDF White Papers do me more harm than good in the corner offices. I need less truth and elegance and more "ROI solutioning." (I kid you not - When I hear it, I imagine the speaker slowly dissolving entirely into a liquid medium: I took Chemistry at Berkeley and I know what a v.t. form of "solution" is likely to mean. I took Linguistics there also. )
I'm telling open-minded people to think of Twitter as a kit of Zoobs. It's a bundle of tubes that can be connected to many types of junction (one to one, broadcast, many to many, back and forth, etc.), ending up at most types of communication hatches (phone, web, SMS, RSS). And it's pretty non-denominational.
It's too open and too free for the corporate person, however smart, to grok -- at least right away. There must be a catch. It's clearly something that IT should approve, but if they don' t need to be involved...or do they. People get fearful.
Anyone else trying to do this?
I work for the Man.
I'm selling Twitter internally as a solution to some enterprise channel needs and it's a slog. First, it's free -- very hard to sell. Second, it's outside -- what if it stops? Third, it's hard to understand -- what are you talking about? or worse, they listen hard and still don't get it but think they do and start talking about it in a way that just won't be successful. But god bless em, they're trying.
Underlying these small barriers is the big, intransigent one: the people I need to persuade don't understand the concept of Channels.
Oh, BTW, here's a magnificent discussion of Twitter on the threshold -- if you're interested in Twitter, you should not miss this. I am a big Blue Whale Labs fan. But, hey, Stowe and Greg, your wonderful PDF White Papers do me more harm than good in the corner offices. I need less truth and elegance and more "ROI solutioning." (I kid you not - When I hear it, I imagine the speaker slowly dissolving entirely into a liquid medium: I took Chemistry at Berkeley and I know what a v.t. form of "solution" is likely to mean. I took Linguistics there also. )
I'm telling open-minded people to think of Twitter as a kit of Zoobs. It's a bundle of tubes that can be connected to many types of junction (one to one, broadcast, many to many, back and forth, etc.), ending up at most types of communication hatches (phone, web, SMS, RSS). And it's pretty non-denominational.
It's too open and too free for the corporate person, however smart, to grok -- at least right away. There must be a catch. It's clearly something that IT should approve, but if they don' t need to be involved...or do they. People get fearful.
Anyone else trying to do this?
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